Comicsphere: Leatherjack by John Smith

I love John Smith – I think the first thing by him that I ever read was Indigo Prime. I have enjoyed Devlin Waugh. I loved Revere. There is something in his writing that is akin to Grant Morrison, something poetic and florid and grandiose that builds a gothic sensibility and sidesteps the need to lay it out point by point in a more prosaic and workmanlike fashion, that a lesser writer might have to deal with. He has been blessed with artists that really run with the freedom the story offers, and when you get that perfect fusion, as sometimes happens in comics – it really runs.
I have to admit I still find it a little weird that Leatherjack made it into a graphic novel format and Revere didn’t. Leatherjack is interesting, and operates in the way a lot of really good comics from that era did – it melds cultural references with pseudo-arcane language and colourful characters and worlds in an attractive hodge-podge that makes some great points about censorship and the power of the word, and the endurance of the human spirit, in a cool shell of a well carried-off sci-fi setting.